Excerpt from PING-PONG HEART by Martin Limón

-3-

Black hair cascaded to bare shoulders, partially covering the smooth contours of a face whitened by powder. The voice was husky, inviting; laced, I imagined, with the sweet scent of booze. She made him laugh. Then she leaned in closer and said, “You slicky my ping-pong heart.”

In GI slang, “slicky” means to steal.

Ernie and I were hunkered in the shadows of the UN Club in the nightclub district of Itaewon, nursing our beers, peering through swirling clouds of smoke, admiring the line of bull being laid down by this gorgeous woman sitting on a barstool about twenty feet from us. Her mark was a young GI—half looped—with a pocketful of cash from yesterday’s end-of-month payday.

The band clanged back to life. Ernie shoved aside his beer and spoke through the din. “The only thing she wants to slicky,” he said, “is this guy’s wallet.”

The guy and the gal were deep in conversation now, their noses almost touching. It was negotiation time; her

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revealing how much an all-nighter would set him back, him asking how close her place was. She called him Johnny.

His hand slipped to her knee. Apparently, they’d come to an agreement. Standing, they both put on their winter coats; she grabbed her spangled handbag, and together they paraded out the front door of the UN Club.

Seeing her face in the glare of the overhead floodlight left no doubt in my mind. The woman was Miss Jo Kyong-ja, whom Major Schultz had identified in the District Health records at the Itaewon Police Station. Johnny was a GI. I could tell from his short haircut and his evident youth, but also, out here in the red light district of Itaewon, there was little else he could be.

The Korean government had designated this area as open to “tourists” only. That is, Korean civilians were not allowed in, unless they worked in one of the bars or nightclubs. I suppose the idea was to protect their morals. Foreigners other than those in the US military were almost nonexistent. The tourism industry was anemic, and the few who did jet into the formerly war-torn country of Korea stayed wisely in downtown Seoul, taking air-conditioned tourist buses to visit the restored palaces and ancient Buddhist temples. Visiting businessmen, other than the Japanese, were still rare, and in either case they stayed in the hotels in Seoul that catered to their specific needs. Besides, it was dangerous down here. Muggings and knife fights weren’t uncommon, although both the Korean government and

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the US military tried to pretend that American GIs would never participate in such naughtiness.

The Koreans catered to the Americans because they were still terrified of the North Korean Communist threat.

They’d lost over two million people during the Korean War and were hoping US military would keep them safe from such a thing ever happening again.

After the double doors swung shut, Ernie and I waited about half a heartbeat. Then we followed. Our job was to get a statement from her, and get a statement we would.

Outside, business girls lined the road, peering through beaded curtains, cooing for GIs to join them. Neon pulsed.

Rock music blared from every bar and nightclub.

Miss Jo Kyong-ja was a shapely woman, wearing high heels with a tight black dress hemmed to about two inches above the knee, covered by an even shorter faux-fur coat.

I couldn’t see in the dim light, but her flesh must’ve been goosebumped. Snow from last week’s storm still crusted the edges of upturned tile roofs.

“Nice legs,” Ernie said.

Johnny was taller than her by about two inches, and once she took off her heels, he’d be taller still. She was about five-four, I figured, maybe -five, and didn’t top one-twenty.

He would be about one-forty-five. Mentally, I was writing the report I knew I’d have to turn in tomorrow. I pulled my collar up. Not so much to look like a gumshoe, but to keep the frost from biting at my neck.

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The joyous couple passed the Lucky Lady Club and were briefly illuminated by flashing red neon. Before my eyes could adjust, they disappeared into a side alley.

“Itaewon Market,” Ernie said. “I’ll go around the long way.”

I nodded and he took off at a jog.

I followed them, away from the brightly lit nightclub district and into the province of night. Brick and cementblock walls lined a narrow pedestrian lane. In the homes behind, single bulbs burned, pots clanged, women pulled dried clothing off laundry lines, old men hacked phlegm.

Waste water ran through a narrow channel, blasting my nostrils with the sting of ammonia. I hopped deftly from side to side, crossing the flow.

Around a bend, I spotted Miss Jo and the young GI again, moving faster now, maybe aware that we were following. The pathway twisted and turned and finally let out into an open area surrounding a venerable oak. They passed wooden benches, climbed a flight of stone steps and stopped. Miss Jo pounded on a wooden gate.

“Na ya!” she said. It’s me.

A few seconds later, a small door in the large wooden gate opened. The two lovers ducked through. Ernie appeared out of a side alley.

“Is this the place Major Schultz described?”

“Yes,” I said, double-checking the notepad I carried in my pocket. “He didn’t have the exact address, but he said it was just off the circle with the old oak.”

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“So we have our woman,” Ernie said.

“Yep,” I replied, staring at the closed gate. “How are we going to get in?”

“Knock,” Ernie said.

I shrugged. “That’s one way.”

We walked to the gate and Ernie slammed his fist onto the top of the splintered surface.

“Kyongchal!” he shouted. Police! One of the few Korean words he knew. That and “Meikju olma-yo?” How much for a beer?

We heard footsteps and muffled voices behind the gate, but no one came to open it. Ernie pounded again. Doors shut, and the noise faded into silence. He turned to me.

“Hoist,” he said.

We’d done this before. I was bigger than Ernie, about three inches taller and easily twenty pounds heavier, so I pulled the hoisting duties. I crouched and cupped my hands in front of my crotch. Ernie stepped up with his right foot, and as he did so, I lifted in one sweeping motion as he reached for the top of the stone wall. Shards of glass were embedded in the mortar, a low-budget security system used all over Seoul. Ernie found a handhold between the razor-like protuberances and I pushed him up higher until his left foot was planted firmly atop the wall. He boosted himself up, rose to his full height and leapt gracefully over the fence. Inside, I heard feet slam on cement, a grunt and then a roll.

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The gate creaked open. Slapping dirt off his jacket, Ernie waved me in.

I hesitated a moment, letting my eyes adjust. A flagstone walkway led into an open courtyard. In the center, a rusted iron pump dripped resolutely into a huge plastic pan. A soot-smeared floodlight weakly illuminated a row of earthen kimchi jars along one side of the courtyard. On the other side, an L-shaped wooden porch fronted a halfdozen oil-papered doors.

A couple of the doors rattled and slid open. Faces peered out, sitting or kneeling on vinyl-covered floors. None of them were Miss Jo’s. Ernie pointed. The only closed door was the one on the far right. The light was off.

Ernie cocked his head. “Coitus interruptus,” he said.

He found nothing more enjoyable than breaking and entering, especially if he might catch someone in a partial state of undress. We stepped up on the porch. Ernie grabbed a handhold and ripped the door open.

As Ernie peered in, the young GI Miss Jo called Johnny leapt out of the dark. He was wielding a short-bladed knife, and before Ernie could react, he’d grabbed Ernie by the back of the neck and shoved the blade point at his throat.

Ernie held his hands out to his side and froze.

The GI was sweating, nostrils flared. “Why are you following me?” he shouted.

Ernie didn’t speak.

“Easy, Johnny,” I told him. “We’re not following you.” I

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suddenly wished I’d brought my .45. But I seldom checked out a weapon from the arms room, mainly because I didn’t want to be tempted to use it. Better to use my wits to solve problems than take the easy way out and settle every dispute with a spray of hot lead. Less paperwork, too.

I cleared my throat and continued. “This has nothing to do with you, Johnny. It’s all about the young lady.”

Johnny glared at Ernie, then turned and caught a glimpse of me. I stood with my hands out to my side, showing him, I hoped, that he was in no danger. He pressed the tip of the blade a little harder into Ernie’s skin. A red drop formed and a miniscule trickle of blood started to flow.

“Easy, pal,” I told him. “No need to do something you’ll regret.”

“This isn’t about the motor pool?” Johnny asked.

“No,” I replied. “Nothing about the motor pool. We just want to talk to the young lady. Ask her a few questions.”

A lot of pilfering went on at the 21st Transportation Company (Car) motor pool, also known as “Twenty-One T Car.” GIs sold gasoline to illegal Korean vendors, cases of motor oil disappeared, tires rolled their way into resale warehouses; occasionally, entire vehicles went missing. But we weren’t here to fix that.

An interior bulb switched on and Miss Jo Kyong-ja stepped out from her hooch. She was still fully clothed.

Instead of berating Johnny for holding a knife to Ernie’s neck, she turned toward me.

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“Whatsamatta you!” she shrieked. “No have education?”

I flashed my badge. “CID,” I said. “We have a few questions for you. And you, Johnny, will need to put that knife down.”

“Will I be able to leave?”

“Yes. We don’t have a beef with you, but put down the knife. Now.” Johnny glanced back and forth between Ernie and me.

I held the badge out toward him and took a step forward so he could see it more easily. As he studied it, Ernie made his move. With one deft motion, he twisted his entire body, pulling his neck away from the knife, and simultaneously snapped a vicious left hook into Johnny’s ribs. Hot breath and saliva exploded from Johnny’s mouth as Ernie grabbed the young soldier by his collar. Then he flung him around in a broad circle and slammed him up against the dirty stone wall.

The knife clattered on flagstone.

Ernie held him, pushing him hard up against the exterior wall, his breath coming fast.

“You said I could leave,” Johnny shrieked.

“Oh, yeah,” Ernie replied. “You can leave.” He slapped Johnny once, twice, hard across the back of his head and then he held out his open palm.

“The blade,” he said.

Ernie loosened his grip just enough to allow Johnny to bend down and pick it up, pausing just a second to give Johnny a chance to use it again, if he dared. He didn’t. Ernie

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snatched the knife out of his hand, then slapped Johnny a couple of more times. He stepped back and tilted the open blade on the ground against a brick. Then he stomped on it. The metal snapped. Leaving it there, Ernie returned to Johnny.

He snarled, “You run your sorry ass back to TwentyOne T Car, and don’t let me see you out here in the village again. Ever! You got that? Itaewon is off limits to you.”

“On whose authority?” Johnny asked.

“On my authority,” Ernie replied, jamming his thumb into his chest.

Johnny studied him for a minute, turned his head away and nodded. Then he stood up and straightened his jacket. As if he couldn’t resist the temptation, Ernie slapped him again. Johnny grabbed the side of his face and, with a resentful pout, walked toward the gate, keeping his eye on Ernie. Ernie hopped forward and planted a roundhouse kick on Johnny’s butt. Ernie shouted, “Move!”

Johnny did, hustling toward the gate and ducking quickly out the front door.

Miss Jo groaned.

Ernie dabbed at the blood on his neck, stared at his moist fingertips for a moment, and then wiped the gore on the side of his blue jeans. He repeated the process a couple of times until the tiny cut was pretty well stanched. Then he reached in his pocket and pulled out a fresh stick of ginseng gum. Looking completely relaxed, he took a seat on the porch.

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I turned to Miss Jo. “Can we go in?” I asked, nodding toward her hooch.

“Hell no. You takey my money go, now you wanna come in my hooch? Never hachi.” Slang for never happen.

I stood in front of the three-foot-wide porch; she stood resolutely in her doorway, arms crossed.

“Last night,” I said, “you brought a GI here.”

She rolled her eyes. “Him.” “Yes, him. He says you took his money. Fifty dollars.”

“Took his money? You dingy dingy?” She twirled her forefinger in a circle around her ear. “He pay me money, I do for him. Supposed to.”

“What’d you do for him?” Ernie asked.

She placed her right hand on her waist and canted her hip. “What you think I do, GI?” “He says you took his money and ran away.”

“He tell you that? Never hachi. I do anything for him.

But he got, how you say, gochangi nasso-yo.”

“Broken.”

“Yeah. Broken. His jaji no work. It broken.”

Jaji refers to an infant’s penis. She wasn’t being too generous to Major Schultz.

“So it wouldn’t work,” Ernie said, enjoying himself now.

“What happened then?”

“He taaksan angry. Say I do something wrong.” She pointed at her nose. “But I no do nothing wrong. It don’t work, that his problem. Not mine. So he say he want his

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money back. I say ‘never hachi.’ He taaksan kullasso-yo.”

Very angry.

“Did he hit you?” I asked.

“No. But he break this.”

She stepped back into the hooch, rummaged in a plastic wardrobe, and returned with a radio. It was smashed beyond repair.

“So you kept his money,” I said, “and he broke your radio.”

Miss Jo nodded grimly.

I asked her to write out a statement.

“In English?” she asked, surprised.

“No, in Korean.”

“You can read?”

I nodded. “I can read. Write carefully, though.”

She hesitated.

“If you don’t,” I told her, “we’ll take you to the Itaewon Police Station. You can write it there.”

Most Koreans steered resolutely away from any contact with the Korean National Police. They were an efficient organization, paramilitary, with the mission of not only stopping crime but also protecting the country from North Korean Communist infiltrators. Things were tough in Korea economically, so it wasn’t unusual for a KNP officer to take money on the side. But if you didn’t have money to give, heaven help you.

Miss Jo found a piece of paper and a pen and sat down

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on the floor to write. When she was done, she handed it to me and I made sure it was signed and dated. I asked her a few more questions, challenging her story, but she stuck with the jaded, simple narrative she’d originally given. I wrote the follow-up questions down, and one by one she wrote her answers. When we were done, I had her sign and date the statement a final time.

As we were about to leave, she said, “What about Johnny?”

“What about him?” I asked.

“He gone. How I pay rent?”

Ernie and I glanced at one another and shrugged. As we walked across the courtyard, she called after us.

“You have money,” she said. “You have food. Some people no have. You take Johnny away, how I pay rent?”

I turned. Her face looked small, sad, almost regretful. I guess I could’ve walked back and handed her some money, but that isn’t what a cop is supposed to do. Besides, Ernie was watching, and in the Army, an act of kindness is seen as something to be mocked, not applauded. Instead of doing what I wanted to do, I turned and the two of us crouched through the small door in the gate.

On our way back to the jeep, we didn’t talk.

-4-

The next morning in the Office of the 8th United States Army Provost Marshal, Colonel Brace asked me, “Who translated this?”

“I did, sir.”

“Did Miss Kim check it?”

“Yes. She made a couple of changes.” She hadn’t, but I wanted to make sure she received credit.

Colonel Brace nodded and placed the statement on his desk. “That’ll be all.”

In the Admin Office, Ernie sat in front of Staff Sergeant Riley’s desk reading this morning’s Pacific Stars and Stripes.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

“He’s not happy.”

“How could he be? A field grade officer lying to him, sending his agents on a wild goose chase. You’d think he’d show the Provost Marshal of the Eighth United States Army a little more respect.”

“How come you never show him any respect?” I asked.

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“I work for him,” Ernie replied. “That’s different.”

Staff Sergeant Riley stuck a pencil behind his ear and leaned forward. “Maybe you two ought to get off your butts, move out smartly, and make your way over to the commissary and start doing your job.”

The words came out as a growl. Even though he had the physique of Tweety Bird in khaki, Sergeant Riley always tried to sound like he was the toughest guy south of the Demilitarized Zone. Still, he was a hard worker. A twofoot-high pile of reports teetered on one side of his desk, completed memos stacked on the other.

“We worked late last night,” Ernie told him, “until almost curfew. Don’t we get any consideration for that?”

“A soldier’s on duty twenty-four hours a day,” Riley replied.

“Unless you’re not,” Ernie said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that some guys have cushy office jobs and don’t have to go running around Itaewon at night until all hours.”

Riley puffed out his chest, but his uniform still hung off him like a starched shirt on a hanger. “I work overtime here.”

“You work overtime all right. You and your bottle of Old Overwart.”

“That’s Overholt!” Riley said. “Premium rye.”

“The cheapest rotgut in the Class VI store.”

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“At least I don’t drink soju.”

Miss Kim snatched another tissue from the box in front of her, stood, and sashayed out the door. As she left, we all watched her shapely posterior. When she was out of sight, I said, “There you go. You two have upset her again.”

Riley grumbled. Ernie snapped the newspaper and pretended to be reading. The intercom buzzed. Riley pressed a button and said, “Sir.” “Contact Major Schultz. I want him here in my office immediately if not sooner.”

“Yes, sir.” Riley buzzed off.

As he was dialing, Ernie and I glanced at one another.

He slipped the newspaper into his jacket pocket and we walked out of the building to the jeep.

Attempting to obstruct the illicit flow of duty-free goods from the PX and commissary was a fetish within the command structure of the 8th United States Army. Groceries, clothing, stereo equipment and American consumer goods of all kinds were shipped to Korea at US taxpayer expense for exclusive use by servicemen and their dependents.

However, there was an acute demand for these items in the Korean economy. Twenty years ago, at the end of the Korean War, the country’s industrial capacity had been totally destroyed. Even now it was still recovering, and exotic items like freeze-dried coffee, granulated sugar, imported bananas and jars of maraschino cherries still

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commanded a high price on the black market. GIs could buy a cartload of groceries at the commissary and sell them to Korean black market honchos for twice what they paid for them. Certain items, like Johnny Walker Black Scotch and Kent cigarettes, had an even bigger markup. Under the Status of Forces Agreement, 8th Army is tasked with stopping this illegal flow of goods. The rationale was that if fledgling Korean industries had to compete with a flood of cheap US consumables, they’d never get off the ground.

The real reason 8th Army was so obsessed with the black market was pure and simple: racism. Most of the purchasers of these goods were the Korean wives of American GIs—derisively called yobos. They flooded both the PX and the commissary, especially after payday, and made it hard for “real Americans” to shop. Also, most of these Korean women were married to enlisted men, not higher-ranking officers. So race and class came into the disdain with which the command treated them.

Our main job, more important than investigating murder, mayhem, robbery, and rape, was to arrest as many yobos as possible for trafficking on the black market.

“Tools of the power structure,” Ernie said.

“That’s us,” I replied.

We were sitting in his jeep, parked in the last row of the lot in front of the Yongsan Commissary, watching yobos exit with cartload after cartload of duty-free US goods.

“Who should we bust?” he asked me.

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“Take your pick.”

“Riley said we had to make at least four arrests today.”

“Four? He can forget it. Give ’em two and they get spoiled.”

“So what excuse do we use for just making one?”

“I’ll think of something.”

“That’s what I like about you, Sueño. You’re creative.”

A Korean woman exited the Commissary. She wore a long green dress that clung to the higher-altitude points of her figure. Loose flesh jiggled beneath. Behind her, a Korean man wearing the smock and pinned-on identification badge of a bagger pushed a cart fully laden with groceries. He loaded them into the trunk of a Ford Granada PX taxi and accepted a two-dollar tip from the fancy lady.

“Two bucks,” Ernie said. “A high-class yobo. I think we should bust her.”

The drill was that we’d follow the cab to the ville, where she’d unload part of her haul in front of one of the many black market operations, and when she accepted her payment we’d swoop in for the arrest. We’d done it so many times it had become routine. Usually, we escorted the woman to the MP Station, wrote the report, and waited for her husband to show up and sign for her release. According to Army regulation, a soldier is responsible for the actions of his dependents, even to the point of court-martial if he doesn’t control their errant behavior.

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“Might as well get it over with,” I said.

Ernie reached for the ignition, but stopped when we heard the roar of an engine approaching. A jeep rolled in front of us. The MP in the passenger seat hopped out and walked toward us, hoisting his web belt as he did so.

“You Bascom?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Ernie replied, “what’s it to ya?”

“Not a goddamn thing, except I have to relay a message.”

“So relay.”

“Colonel Brace wants to talk to you. ASAP!” “Okay, Charlie,” Ernie said, tossing the MP a mock salute.

“The name’s Wilkins,” he said, but Ernie had already fired up the jeep and we were rolling away.

“Why do you have to aggravate people like that?” I asked.

“Like what?” Ernie said.

“You treated him like he was your servant.”

“I did?”

“Yes, which is maybe why Miss Kim won’t talk to you anymore.”

“What’s she got to do with this?”

“It’s your attitude, Ernie. She’s a catch. You ought to treat her better.”

Ernie seemed puzzled by this. “I treated her as good as I’ve ever treated any woman.”

That, of course, was the crux of the problem.

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■

■

Colonel Brace kept us standing at attention. He shoved the translated statement across his desk.

“He says it’s a lie,” he told us.

“Of course he says that,” Ernie replied. “He’s not gonna admit that he can’t get it up.”

“He can’t get it up, sir,” Colonel Brace replied.

“Yes, sir.”

Flustered, Colonel Brace continued. “It’s not about not getting it up. Major Schultz still claims that she took off with his money. He wants to make it official. He wants to file a complaint with the KNP Liaison Office.”

“He’ll be laughed out of Itaewon,” Ernie said.

“He’ll be laughed out of Itaewon, sir.” Colonel Brace was reaching the limit of his patience.

“Yes, sir!” Ernie replied again.

“I know,” the Colonel said, “it doesn’t make sense. This will destroy his reputation.”

Yongsan Compound had about 5,000 soldiers. Since it housed 8th Army headquarters, its personnel roster was top-heavy with brass, with almost half of those soldiers being officers. Gossip swirled fast, not only here, but throughout the military community. Even all the way back at Fort Hood, Texas, it seemed almost certain that if Major Schultz pressed this case, his wife would eventually catch wind of it.

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We were all thinking the same thing. Major Schultz was having an emotional meltdown. He was destroying his military career, maybe his marriage. I’d seen it before: the vagaries of military life, the separation from home and family, the intense peer pressure not only to conform, but to paradoxically be in constant competition for promotion with the people you lived and worked with. Sometimes it was all too much for even experienced soldiers. Many of them turned to drink, a few to drugs, and occasionally some acted out by breaking the law.

“Can someone talk sense to him, sir?” I said. “Even if he’s telling the truth, all he’s out is fifty dollars.”

“I’ve tried. But he just left on his way to the Liaison Office. Do you have a contact over there?”

“Yes, sir. Lieutenant Pong, the officer in charge.”

“Speak to him. See what can be worked out.”

“You want us to quash the report?” I asked.

“Maybe. Let’s talk it over with them. See if they have any ideas.”

We did. And the KNPs were more than happy to set Major Schultz’s report aside and take no action. A few days went by and we expected him to calm down and forget the whole thing. Unfortunately, he didn’t.

Three days later, Ernie and I were making our customary rounds of the Itaewon gin joints when Captain Kim, the commander of the Itaewon Police station, sent a runner.

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The young cop found us at the bar of the Seven Club and escorted us to the hooch near the old oak tree. Miss Jo had been beaten, and badly. Blood smeared the vinyl floor.

The neighbors said they thought they had heard someone speaking English, probably American soldiers. Two attackers, that’s the one thing they all agreed on. But the night had been dark and no one had seen them clearly. And as soon as they could, they all shut their doors firmly, hiding from the unwanted presence of the Korean National Police.

Miss Jo had already been taken to the hospital. The deed had almost certainly been done by American GIs. It would be up to us, Agents George Sueño and Ernie Bascom, to find the perps and bring them to justice, or at least what passed for justice in these parts.

-5-

The next morning, Doctor Park was gruff with us. “She pay nothing. Who is going to pay for her?”

He was a middle-aged man with grey streaks running through his hair. His white coat was so fresh, I figured he’d put on a new one just to talk to us.

“She’ll be filing a Status of Forces charge,” I told him. “She should make enough to pay her hospital bills and more.”

“How long will that take?”

I shrugged. “Maybe a couple of months.”

He sighed. “And once she gets the money, she’ll run away.”

I handed him my card. “I’ll put you in touch with a SOFA Liaison Officer. Maybe he can arrange for her bill to be paid directly.”

He gazed at me skeptically but stuck the card in his shirt pocket. The three of us walked to her ward. Down the long cement corridors, Ernie kept swiveling his head, checking out the nurses.

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Miss Jo was in a dimly lit room with about a half-dozen other patients, asleep, a tube down her nose and a hanging bottle feeding liquid into her arm.

“When will we be able to question her?” I asked.

“If you want, we’ll wake her now.”

I glanced at Ernie. He nodded. “No time like the present.”

The doctor called for a nurse and one scurried in. She must’ve been hovering just outside the door. He barked an order that I couldn’t understand, and in less than a minute she came back with a syringe and a bottle of fluid. Doctor Park administered the shot himself. Within seconds, Miss Jo Kyong-ja’s eyelids fluttered and then popped fully open.

The doctor checked her pulse once again and left us alone.

I patted her forearm. “Hello, Miss Jo.” She nodded weakly.

“We’re here to help you. Tell us who did this to you.”

There seemed to be little understanding in her eyes.

“Miss Jo, last night, who came to your hooch? Who hit you?

Who beat you up?”

Her lips moved and it was as if she were trying to coax long-rusted machinery to crank over. Finally, she spoke.

“You know who.”

“Was it Major Schultz?”

“Who?” “Fred Schultz.”

“Freddy? Yes, Freddy.”

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“A big blond guy,” I said. “Red face. Fat cheeks.”

She nodded. “Yes, him.”

“Did he say why he was doing this to you?”

“He wanted me to say not true.”

“Not true what?”

“What I told you.”

“About him not being able to do it?”

She nodded.

“Did he ask for his money back?”

“He say no, keep money. He just want me change story.”

“And you told him no.”

“I told him never hachi.” She gazed around, as if examining the ward for the first time. “How much this cost?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who pay?”

It wasn’t our job to advise her about filing a SOFA charge. Ernie and I glanced at one another.

“He pay,” she said. “Right?”

“Maybe,” I replied, “if you file a SOFA charge.”

She knew what it was. As a business girl in Itaewon, it was one of the first things you learned.

“Okay,” she said, satisfied. “I sleep now.”

“One more question.”

She reopened her eyes.

“Was Freddy alone?”

“No, one other man with him.”

“Did he hit you also?”

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“He hit. Freddy no hit.”

“He didn’t?”

“No. Other man do everything.”

“Do you know who this other man was?”

She shook her head. “Molla-yo,” she said. I don’t know.

“I sleep now.”

“But he was a GI?” She nodded drowsily. “Yeah. Big GI.” Her eyes closed and her breathing became slow and steady.

The written report of our findings was signed by both me and Ernie. It created somewhat of a furor at the Provost Marshal’s office, since it directly accused a field grade officer of being party to a felonious assault, which the 8th Army honchos weren’t happy with.

One of the first consequences, other than placing both me and Ernie firmly back in the doghouse, was that Major Frederick Manfield Schultz withdrew his complaint with the KNPs for the missing fifty dollars. He also denied in writing that he had been in Itaewon or anywhere near the home of Miss Jo Kyong-ja on the night on which she was assaulted. Ernie and I were not allowed to interrogate him.

As a field grade officer, Colonel Brace allowed him the courtesy of responding to the accusation through a written statement, vetted by a lawyer from the 8th Army Judge Advocate General’s Office. The statement went on to say that Miss Jo had probably accused him of the assault in

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order to qualify for a larger SOFA settlement. If she had been assaulted by a Korean, as the statement speculated, she would receive nothing. Even if she’d been assaulted by an American GI of lesser rank, it would not be as embarrassing to 8th Army and she would probably end up with a smaller settlement.

Ernie and I reviewed the evidence gathered by the KNPs at the scene, but there wasn’t much. Nobody called out the forensic investigative team when an Itaewon business girl was beaten up. In fact, the KNPs had allowed the landlady to clean up the blood while they were still at the scene. She’d also washed the bedsheets and tidied up the room, hoping to sign a new tenant up soon if Miss Jo didn’t make rent.

The statements from the neighbors were pretty much uniform. When the commotion started, they’d been frightened and just stayed in their rooms. When asked what exactly they had heard said during the melee, they all said they weren’t sure.

So that’s where it stood. A classic he-said, she-said case.

Still, Miss Jo might make some money out of it if she hired a Korean attorney familiar with SOFA claims procedures. Keeping the incident quiet, even if it meant paying out a little money, would be 8th Army’s main goal.

And that was where it stood for almost three weeks.

Miss Jo, I found out later, was released from the hospital two days after we’d seen her. I also found out that she

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hadn’t yet filed a SOFA charge, though she had six months to do so.

Ernie pestered me with questions about my conversations with Miss Kim. I told him what I could—our talks hadn’t been confidential—and he kept asking me how I thought she was holding up. It seemed that the sight of Specialist Fenton following her, touching her elbow and whispering rude comments in her ear had upset him more than he’d originally let on. In the office, he started being nice to her: making sure she got a cookie whenever somebody received a care package from the States and walking Riley out into the hallway when he let loose with too much profanity.

She noticed. Of course, she’d always noticed what Ernie did, casting furtive glances at him even during the frostiest days of their busted relationship. The tension in the 8th Army CID Admin Office started to ease. Finally, what I thought was going to happen happened.

Ernie asked Miss Kim out on a date. She hesitated, but Ernie kept after her. Ignoring her unspoken cues, he forced her into giving him an answer. She stood up from her desk, looked him straight in the eye, and turned him down flat.

Never, she said, would she go out with him again. Redfaced, she walked out of the Admin Office and marched down to the ladies’ room, where she stayed for almost half an hour.

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“Will you quit harassing my secretary?” Riley said. “We have work to do in this office.”

“Paper,” Ernie said. “Nothing but paper.” But he disappeared too, for the rest of the afternoon. After the cannon went off at close of business, I wandered casually down the walkway toward Gate Five. I watched Miss Kim leave, along with hundreds of other Korean employees, and then outside I saw someone following her at a distance. This time, it wasn’t Specialist Fenton. If it had been, I would’ve busted his chops. Instead, it was who I’d expected it to be: Agent Ernie Bascom. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever seen him so determined, not when it came to a woman anyway.

On the main road outside of Gate Five, Miss Kim climbed onto a packed Seoul metropolitan bus. After about a dozen other customers clambered aboard, Ernie pulled himself up the narrow steps and wedged his way into the teeming mass of humanity. The bus pulled off in a cloud of exhaust.

I met Captain Leah Prevault at Hanil-guan, a restaurant in downtown Seoul that specialized in noodles. It was a large place with two floors and probably more than sixty tables, vastly popular with young Koreans. What Leah and I liked about it was that it was miles from the compound and, other than us, we’d never seen any foreigners there.

“You’re getting better with chopsticks,” I told her. Only about half the noodles were sliding back into the broth. She dabbed her lips with a folded napkin.

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“I bet you say that to all the girls.”

“Only you.”

We’d been seeing each other since we’d first worked on a case together some six months ago. Captain Prevault was a psychiatrist, and I often picked her brain about the cases I dealt with.

“Major Schultz has everything going for him,” I told her.

“A wife, a family back at Fort Hood, a solid military career.

Even after losing that fifty bucks to that business girl, he should’ve kept his mouth shut. Instead, he makes it worse.”

She’d heard about the beating Miss Jo had received.

Leah Prevault picked up the flat metal spoon and ladled broth into her mouth.

“Male pride,” she said. “Can’t admit that he can’t get it up.” She grinned devilishly.

“You think that’s it?”

“Yup. And when he can’t get it up, he has to blame somebody. Unfortunately, it’s usually the woman.”

“You’ve seen cases like this before?”

She nodded her head. “Often.”

“You think his wife has heard about it?”

“No question. So has his boss, the J-2.”

The J-2 was the staff officer in charge of military intelligence, who reported directly to the Commanding Officer of the 8th United States Army. The “J” stood for joint command—of both the ROK and US—and the “2” was the standard designation for military intelligence operations.

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“Has the J-2 relieved him of his regular duties?” I asked.

“That’s not what I hear at the O Club.” She was referring to the 8th Army Officers Club. “In fact the J-2 is backing him up, keeping him on some important investigation he was in the middle of.”

“About what?”

She shrugged. “I’m just a lowly MD. You’ll have to talk to the honchos about that.”

When we finished our dinner, I took her hand. “Thanks for coming out here with me.”

She stared straight into my eyes. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

Leah Prevault wasn’t the most beautiful woman in the world, but she had brains and an outgoing personality that made most people relaxed enough to confess their innermost secrets to her. By Ernie’s standards she was plain: She wore no makeup, her long brown hair was usually knotted in the back of her head, and her hornrimmed glasses often slipped halfway down her nose.

But her full-lipped smile was generous, her complexion smooth, and I’d probably fallen for her the first time I met her.

“You like the brainy ones,” Ernie told me, without a tone of approval. “They just land you in trouble.”

“Trouble in what way?”

“They make you want to settle down.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

Ernie looked at me like I was mad. “There’s a whole

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world of women out there.” He waved his arm. “How can you settle for just one?”

“How many do you need?” I asked.

“More than I’m getting,” he said.

Captain Prevault and I didn’t return to the compound that night. Fraternization between the ranks is a courtmartial offense. We stayed at a Korean inn, away from the prying eyes of the 8th US Army.

Two days later, the word came down. Riley hoisted the phone to his ear, listened, and barked, “Roger that!” He slammed down the receiver. “You guys remember that Major Schultz?” he asked.

“What do you mean, ‘remember’?” I asked.

“He’s history.”

“What are you talking about, Riley?”

“That was the KNP Liaison. They found Schultz dead, at some dive out in Itaewon.” He jotted something on a slip of paper and handed it to me. “Captain Kim’s at the scene right now.”

I looked at the paper. The Dragon King Nightclub.

“Dead?” Ernie asked.

“Deader than a ping-pong ball in a minefield,” Riley replied. “Better get your asses in gear.”

We did. Ernie grabbed his coat and I grabbed mine.

Within seconds, we were in his jeep and speeding out Gate 7, waving at the MPs, swerving toward Itaewon. Ernie

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honked his horn and zoomed past a three-wheeled truck loaded with a small mountain of garlic. He held his nose.

“I’ll never get used to this country,” he said.

“Oh, bull, you love every minute of it,” I told him. “I’ve seen you pop down three orders of roasted garlic in one sitting.”

“That’s after a bottle of soju.”

“You like the smell of garlic better after a bottle of soju?”

“I like anything better after a bottle of soju.”